


Just As We Are

by bwayfan25



Category: ER (TV 1994)
Genre: A retelling of Just As I Am, Adoption, Comfort/Angst, Episode: s11e14 Just As I Am, Family Drama, Flashbacks, Healthcare, Homophobia, Mothers and Daughters, Set in the matriarchs universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-29 00:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30148014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwayfan25/pseuds/bwayfan25
Summary: The woman’s eyes looked Kerry up and down for a moment before she looked at Annie. She seemed to study her for a brief moment before she looked back at Kerry and shook her head.“No, no. It’s fine,” she assured Kerry. “But, can I ask? Is she your daughter?”Kerry looked about ready to roll her eyes, despite the small smirk that twitched her lips. She nodded before looking back at Annie, who was grinning broadly.“Yes, she is,” Kerry answered. “I don’t know why I don’t just add that to the introduction.”A visitor to the ER turns Kerry's life upside down with the revelation that she is Kerry's birth mother come to find her. But in the "matriarchs" universe, Helen Kingsley isn't the only one with a daughter, nor is she Kerry's only mother.A retelling of the season 11 episode "Just As I Am" set in the "matriarchs" universe.
Relationships: Susan Lewis/Kerry Weaver
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Just As We Are

Susan paused at the door to the trauma room, chart in hand. Kerry was inside, arguing with Elizabeth’s new Attending Surgeon Lucien Dubenko over the differential for a trauma patient while Abby and a surgical resident looked on. 

Robert Romano had been offered a cushy job as Assistant VP at a surgical robotics company around Thanksgiving of the previous year and had told Kerry he’d be willing to stay on until a new Chief of Surgery was hired to replace him. Neither he nor Kerry had expected the Board to approve Elizabeth Corday as quickly as they had, meaning they’d barely celebrated the new year before Romano left. With Elizabeth taking over more administrative duties, day-to-day consults in the ER were left to new hires like Dubenko.

Thinking it safer to interrupt the disagreement than leave that to Kerry, she cleared her throat.

“Uh, Kerry? That lady with dyspnea….” Susan consulted the chart in her hand. “Sharon Williams? She’s asking for you. Said she was here before and you were her doc.”

Kerry nodded and stepped back from the table. 

“Okay. This ‘Swiss cheese’ is stable,” she declared, gesturing to the patient with screwdriver stab wounds across his back in front of her. “Let's get him admitted to a med-surg bed, and don't listen to any of Dr. Dubenko's suggestions.”

Dubenko rolled his eyes as she passed to take the chart from Susan. 

As Kerry stepped out of the room, someone popped out from behind the doors which they had been leaning their face so close to that they nearly left a faceprint on the glass. 

“Can’t I just stand next to the wall like I do for the other ones?” Annie said in a pleading voice. “Just inside the door? I’m supposed to write about what I see and I can’t see anything from out here.”

Kerry spun on her heel to look Annie in the eye. She raised a warning finger. 

“Annalise, I said no. I am saying no again. If I must say no a third time, you will spend the rest of the day upstairs in my office. Is that what you want?” When Annie didn’t reply, Kerry quirked an eyebrow. “I said, is that what you want?”

Annie hung her head, but nevertheless heaved a sigh.

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.” Kerry lowered her finger, but her expression remained. “I have told you _several_ times now that I am stretching the limit of what is allowed just by allowing you to do this much. You can complain about it all you want in your essay. _Do not_ complain about it again to me. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Annie replied, nodding.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” Kerry finished. “Now, come on.”

Kerry turned to continue on towards her patient. Annie fought the urge to let her face show the discontent she felt and just followed quietly (as Momma might have her back turned, but Mommy didn’t).

Haleh flagged Kerry down as she reached the door. She handed the chart to Kerry, who reviewed it as Haleh filled her in on the important parts.

“Sharon Williams. BP 124/70, pulse ox 90. No history of asthma or emphysema.”

“Thanks, Haleh.” Kerry glanced up from the chart to the woman on the bed. “Sharon Williams?”

There was a small pause before the woman responded with a small nod. 

“I’m Dr. Weaver. This is Miss Levin. She is shadowing me today for a high school project,” Kerry introduced with a gesture towards Annie, who had taken her place against the exam room wall. “And, before we begin, I do just want to say that she has been _thoroughly_ briefed on the importance of healthcare privacy and to not repeat anything she sees or hears while she’s here. However, if you aren’t comfortable with her being in here, I can ask her to leave.”

The woman’s eyes looked Kerry up and down for a moment before she looked at Annie. She seemed to study her for a brief moment before she looked back at Kerry and shook her head.

“No, no. It’s fine,” she assured Kerry. “But, can I ask? Is she your daughter?”

Kerry looked about ready to roll her eyes, despite the small smirk that twitched her lips. She nodded before looking back at Annie, who was grinning broadly. 

“Yes, she is,” Kerry answered. “I don’t know why I don’t just add that to the introduction.”

“Everyone has guessed so far,” Annie added brightly. “Except the one guy that was unconscious. But I think he would’ve guessed too. If he wasn’t unconscious.”

“Mm-hmm.” Kerry pointed Annie towards the stool next to the wall. “Sit.”

Annie did what she was told as Kerry turned back to Sharon Williams. As she took her stethoscope from around her shoulders and crossed around to the other side of the bed, she could see the woman’s eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them before settling back on Kerry.

“You said you were in once before?” Kerry asked with another glance at the chart before she set it aside.

“Yes,” the woman replied hesitantly.

“And when was that?”

“Oh, God, let me think.” The woman gave a nervous chuckle. “I don't know. I… I can't quite remember.”

As Kerry made to listen to the woman’s breathing, the woman shook her head. She gave another, more pronounced glance between Annie and Kerry.

“You know, I'm actually feeling much better now. I probably didn't need to come in….”

“Well, as long as you did-”

“Well, I don't… This whole thing is silly,” the woman said, shaking her head again. “I don't know what I was thinking. I'm much better. I'm breathing fine.”

“Why don't you let me examine you and we'll make sure of that?” Kerry asked. When the woman gave a hesitant nod of concession, Kerry raised her stethoscope again. “Okay, you said you experienced shortness of breath?”

“Yes.”

“Any cough or fever?”

“No.”

“Have you had any prolonged periods of immobilization? Like a plane or car trip?”

“No.”

Kerry straightened up and put her stethoscope back around her shoulders. The woman once again glanced at Annie, who now had a pen and notebook in her hand and was sitting so far forward on her stool, straining to see what Kerry was doing, that she was practically standing up.

“What class is your project for?” the woman asked.

Annie tore her eyes away from Kerry to look at the woman, who was looking at her with great interest. 

“Uh, it’s for my Speech class,” she answered. “I’m supposed to shadow someone who has a job I’m interested in. And then I write a speech about it. And then I _give_ a speech about it.”

The woman nodded and gave Annie a small smile, which she hesitantly returned. She glanced at Kerry, who had been watching the exchange with curiosity. 

For a moment, Annie thought Kerry might say something, but she didn’t. Instead, she just turned back to the patient in the bed. 

“Well, your lungs sound good, and your oxygen level is fine. We'll check a few tests and see what's going on,” she explained as she scribbled on the chart in her hand. “Haleh, EKG, PA and lateral chest, D-dimer.”

Haleh nodded and took the offered chart. Kerry turned back to the bed.

“And I’ll be back to check on you later,” she informed the patient before glancing at Annie and nodding towards the door. “Annie.”

Annie nodded and began to slide off the stool to follow Kerry out the door, but Sharon Williams raised a hand to stop her. 

“Actually, do you mind if I ask a couple questions?” she asked, glancing between Kerry and Annie. “I’m…. I’m curious about the project.”

Annie was once again sure Kerry looked like she was about to say something, but again, she didn’t. She just looked at Annie and shrugged. 

“That’s up to her.”

Annie shrugged in reply.

“Yeah, sure. That’s fine.”

The woman smiled again, broadly this time, as Annie took her seat on the stool once more. Kerry gave her a look that clearly read _“Make me proud,”_ before she and Haleh left the room. 

The woman watched them go before glancing back at Annie and giving her another hesitant smile. 

“It must be neat, your mom being a doctor and all,” she said with a small gesture towards the door. 

Annie considered this for a moment and then shrugged. 

“I guess. But three of my four parents are doctors, so it’s really kind of normal,” she explained simply. “I _could_ have shadowed the parent that’s _not_ a doctor, but he teaches at my school, so I still would have had to go to school today.”

“What year are you in school?”

“I’m a freshman.”

“So, that would make you… what? About fourteen?” the woman guessed. “Fifteen?”

Annie considered the woman with suspicion for a moment before answering, “Fourteen.”

(After all, why would a stranger care how old she was?)

The woman must have sensed this, as she quickly changed the subject away from Annie’s age back to her schoolwork. 

“Have you learned anything interesting following your mom around?” she asked with another little gesture towards the door. 

“Yeah, I think so,” Annie replied, nodding. “I chose to shadow Momma because she’s the Chief of Staff, which means she’s in charge of the whole hospital. So, we went to a meeting this morning about running the hospital before we came down here. 

“And I’ve enjoyed getting to see stuff closer. I’d like to see it even _closer,_ but I’m not allowed to do that. Still, it’s cool to get to see it even from here. I don’t have to watch from a distance like I usually do. Because I’m here a lot.”

The woman’s face seemed to fall, which made Annie frown. 

“You’re… here a lot?” she asked sadly. 

It took a second for Annie to realize why the woman’s tone had changed so suddenly. Then, her eyes widened. 

“Waiting for people to take me to soccer,” she said quickly. “Not because I’m sick or hurt or anything.”

The woman nodded in understanding, clearly relieved. She smiled again, this time as if pleasantly surprised. 

“You play soccer?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“With...with those?”

The woman gave a nervous nod towards the fuschia crutches leaning against Annie’s stool. 

“Mm-hmm,” Annie repeated with a single nod. “Well, not these ones specifically. I have a pair of blue ones that we bought for a completely different reason, but they ended up being the color of both my school and club teams. So, those became my soccer crutches. These ones just have the stickers.”

Annie pointed out the (numerous) stickers in the shape of soccer balls on the crutches. The woman stared at them for a moment before nodding. Her eyes flicked to the door. 

“Your mom uses one, too,” she half-stated, half-asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

The woman’s brow furrowed in concern. 

“Why?”

“Because we’ve got weird hips.”

“Weird… hips,” the woman repeated slowly. 

“One weird hip each. Our other hips _aren’t_ weird.” Annie paused, her eyes narrowing. “At least, I don’t _think_ they are…. But I guess they _could_ be….”

She took another moment to think before shrugging again. 

“Well, if they are, they aren’t _nearly_ as weird as the other ones.”

“Why do you call them… ‘weird?’” the woman asked, the concern on her face now evident in her voice. 

“They aren’t formed properly, so they don’t fit together like they’re supposed to. Which means they don’t _act_ like they’re supposed to.” Annie’s face screwed up in thought. “There’s a real name for it, which I can never remember, because I never call it that...”

Annie raised a finger to her mouth, tapping on her lips as she tried to remember the clinical name for ‘weird hips.’

“Congestive? No…. That’s something different. I don’t have that,” she muttered. “Congenital…. Congenital Hip Dysplasia! That’s it. But that’s long and confusing, so it’s easier to just say ‘weird hips.’”

Though it went unnoticed by Annie, the woman’s concern had deepened substantially. 

“Is it… genetic?” she asked in a low voice. 

“It’s congenital. Which Momma says most people would call a birth defect.”

“Meaning her mother gave it to her and she gave it to you?” 

“....Sorta? I mean, we know that I have it because she does, but we don’t know if her mom had it or not because Momma was adopted,” Annie explained. “So, _her_ mom didn’t have it, but Grandma didn’t give birth to Momma. 

“But it can also just kind of happen randomly. Like my littlest sister has it - had it. _Had_ it. And Momma didn’t give birth to her, so….”

Annie’s words trailed off, ending in another shrug. But before the woman could ask any more questions, Susan poked her head in from the hallway. 

“Hey, Annie?” When Annie looked up, Susan nodded her out the door. “Come on.”

Annie nodded and slid off her stool again. 

“It was nice getting to talk to you,” the woman said with her most genuine smile yet. “Good luck with your project.”

“Um, thanks. And, it was… nice to talk to you, too.”

She followed Susan out the door to where she’d stopped a little ways away from the door. 

“What’s wrong?” Annie asked, frowning. 

“Oh, nothing. Momma just said to come get you if it had been longer than a few minutes,” Susan replied before dropping her voice. “What was she asking you about?”

“School. And soccer. And my crutches.”

“Ah. So, the big three, then?”

“Pretty much,” Annie replied, nodding in acknowledgement. But when she saw Susan glance up towards the exam room behind her, she frowned again. “What’s that look for?”

“Nothing. It’s just…. I can see you both lined up through the window,” Susan said slowly. “And from here… you kind of look alike.”

Annie gave her a look of immense confusion before glancing behind her. When she looked back at Susan, it was to give her a look of exasperation. 

“Because we both have red hair?”

“No…. Well, _maybe._ I don’t know,” Susan replied with a shrug. At the sight of Annie’s expression, she crossed her arms. “What’s _that_ look for?”

“Well, whenever you say that someone looks like somebody else, I always think of the time you said that Momma looked like Grandma.”

“They bore a vague resemblance to each other,” Susan said, raising a (defensive) finger at Annie. “If I didn’t know they weren’t biologically related - and I’d never seen a picture of your Grandpa - I wouldn’t have guessed. And, for the record, your Grandma really liked it when I said that.”

“Momma thought you were being silly.”

“Yes, but since when is that news?”

Just as Susan ushered Annie away from the room, Kerry drew even with the desk, where Greg Pratt and his med student Jane had just returned from treating an earlier trauma patient.

“Pratt, Pick's Disease?” she asked, glancing up at him from the chart she had just sat down.

As if deflecting, he immediately asked, “Jane?”

“Uh, similarities with Alzheimer's, but with an earlier age of onset and a faster progression of symptoms,” Jane answered. “Mainly causes damage to the frontal lobes of the brain resulting in disinhibition. Patient can be extremely rude, which we have seen, and then can become extremely loving, which we have not seen. 

“Uh, often has a tendency to repeat statements spoken to them, you know, but I'd actually say it's a bit more…”

“Thank you, Jane,” Pratt said, cutting her off with a pat on the shoulder. “Good job, good job.”

Jane smiled at the compliment. However, Kerry, who had been watching the explanation with bemusement, just nodded.

“Yes, and let me see. Was that Dr. Pratt's extremely efficient teaching or was it…” Kerry leaned forward and turned the computer monitor towards her. “‘eMedicine.’"

She glanced up at Pratt, who rolled his eyes. 

“She learned about it, didn't she?”

“She learned the facts,” Kerry stated. “Not necessarily how to handle the patients or the family-”

“Yeah, but she will,” Pratt said, cutting her off. “The woman's got some lacerations. We're going to suture her as soon as the Ativan kicks in.”

“Dr. Pratt said that…” 

“What about the family?” Kerry asked, cutting Jane off.

“The daughter's trying to line up a skilled nursing facility.”

“You should help her with that,” Kerry suggested (read: told). 

“Isn't that a social worker thing?” Pratt said with another eyeroll. 

Kerry was about to suggest (again, _tell)_ him to just dive in, but was unable to do so as someone who had a much stronger opinion on such statements walked behind him. 

Carmen Vargas-Vega stopped walking and stared at the back of his head for a moment. She made momentary eye contact with Kerry, as if asking _“Did he really just say that?”_ before clearing her throat. 

“Turn around and say that again to my face.”

Pratt did indeed turn around, but at the sight of the social worker standing behind him, his frustrated expression gave way to a charming (if self-protective) smile. 

“Carmen-”

“Don’t ‘Carmen’ me,” Carmen said firmly, stopping him with a finger. “Say it again. To my face.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, raising his hands defensively. 

Carmen just cocked her head slightly and flashed Pratt a dangerous smile. She raised an eyebrow at him.

“You still haven’t said it.”

“Dr. Weaver suggested that we help a patient’s family find a skilled nursing facility,” Jane offered. “Dr. Pratt was saying that that’s something that social workers usually arrange.”

“That’s true. However, Dr. Pratt didn’t say that as if deferring to our expertise, now did he?” Carmen asked rhetorically, glancing from Jane to Pratt. “In fact, unless I’m mistaken, he was saying it as if he thought he was _better_ than that.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Pratt insisted. “It’s just that helping a family find a skilled-nursing facility is just kind of….”

When he didn’t finish the sentence, Carmen’s eyebrows rose. 

“You were going to say ‘easy,’ weren’t you?” Carmen’s lips curled into a smirk. “You don’t know the first thing about finding a SNF, do you?”

Pratt’s brow threatened to furrow at the way Carmen pronounced the acronym as “sniff,” but he held strong, choosing instead to pull himself up to full height (which was an inch shorter than Carmen’s). 

“Try me,” he challenged. 

This only made Carmen’s smirk grow. 

“What’s the first question you need to ask when choosing a SNF?”

Pratt gave himself a moment to think. 

“What’s closest to her family?”

“Wrong.” Carmen glanced at Kerry. “Dr. Weaver, would you like to give it a shot?”

“Who’s going to pay for it,” Kerry replied automatically. 

“Correct,” Carmen said with a nod before looking back at Pratt. “So. Who’s going to pay for it?”

“Well, she’s got Medicare,” Pratt said as he flipped through the chart. 

“So, Medicare is going to pay for it?” Carmen asked. “For how long?”

Pratt sucked in air before replying, “Indefinitely?”

Again, Carmen glanced at Kerry. 

“Dr. Weaver?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Kerry said slowly. “But I know it’s not indefinitely.”

“One hundred days lifetime maximum. And that goes for _all_ hospitalizations,” Carmen informed them. “So, if Medicare pays for it, she’s out on the street in three months. What’s your next move?”

“See if she can pay for it?” Pratt offered with a shrug. 

“I don’t know if that would work. Her daughter mentioned something about a fixed income,” Jane added, before lighting up with an idea. “We could help her apply for Medicaid?”

“Alright. How do you apply for Medicaid?” Carmen looked from the med student to her resident. “What are the income guidelines for Medicaid? Can you have Medicare and Medicaid at the same time in the state of Illinois?”

Pratt looked like he might try and guess, but he seemed to know when he was beat. He heaved a sigh and raised his hands defensively.

“I don’t know.”

Carmen smiled and then took a step towards him. 

“For your information, Dr. Pratt,” she said, her smile taking on its earlier dangerous edge, “the Masters of Social Work is our professional degree. We are at the same level in our field as you are in yours. We’re just not so conceited that we need to put ‘doctor’ in front of our name.”

“Ms. Vargas-Vega?” Jane said, looking at Carmen from around Pratt. “I have a question.”

Carmen looked at her, her smile turning back into a smirk at the sound of her name. 

“I like you,” she remarked with a wink. “What’s your question?”

“She has Medicare, but she’s only fifty-eight,” Jane pointed out. “How can she have Medicare if she’s not sixty-five yet?”

“Oh, I think I can answer that,” Kerry chimed in. When Carmen motioned for her to go on, she said, “She’s been receiving Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability Income for at least twenty-four months.”

“That is correct,” Carmen replied, nodding.

“That makes sense,” Jane said, nodding as well. “Her daughter said the symptoms started about two years ago.”

“I can’t get started on the topic of Social Security,” Kerry remarked, shaking her head. “I won’t be able to stop.”

Just as she said this, Annie and Susan joined her at the desk. Kerry looked at Annie and raised her eyebrows. 

“Do you want to do it?” 

“YES,” Annie replied without hesitation. “I wanna do it. Do what?”

“What’s my complaint about Social Security?”

Annie paused for a brief moment before slapping both hands down on the desk.

“Disabled people should not have to live on seventy-five percent of the Federal Poverty Level _or less_ just because they can’t work,” she said in a serious (and well-practiced) tone. “They should receive enough money to live on and they should be allowed to save money and get married without losing their income and the healthcare benefits that are literally keeping them alive.”

As quickly as she’d assumed it, Annie relaxed from her serious position. She glanced at Kerry expectantly. 

“Like that?”

“Yes,” Kerry said with a nod. “Well done.”

Annie beamed as Kerry set a hand on her shoulder and nudged her forward. As they walked away in the direction of Kerry’s next patient, Carmen looked at Susan.

“That was both impressive… and frightening.”

Susan nodded in agreement. 

“You should see when the four-year-old does it.”

Carmen looked even more impressed (and frightened) at the thought. But she had no chance to say anything else before Susan overheard Haleh tell Kerry that the patient she’d just seen - and the one who’d asked Annie all those questions - had never actually been here before.

She followed as Kerry and Haleh (and Annie) went to check the exam room to find the patient missing. 

“She left?” Annie asked Susan as Kerry rushed past them towards the doors. “Are people allowed to do that?”

“It’s not advised.”

They caught up with Kerry outside. She’d stopped a few feet in front of the door in the Ambulance Bay. Sharon Williams, already bundled up in her coat and hat, was walking towards the road. 

“Ms. Williams,” Kerry called out. “Please wait. Your test results aren't back yet.”

This did nothing to stop the patient, who just waved Kerry away as she continued on. 

“I don't need 'em.”

“It shouldn't be much longer.”

“I don't need 'em,” the woman repeated.

“You could have a blood clot in the lung,” Kerry called out with urgence in her voice. “Or fluid around your heart.”

This urgency must have worked, because the woman stopped and turned around. 

“Stop, please,” she said in a voice almost like a beg. “I don't have any of those things. There's nothing wrong with me.”

Kerry shivered in the early February wind, her brow furrowing.

“I don't understand.”

“I've never been to this hospital before. My name's not Sharon Williams,” the woman told her. “It's... Helen Kingsley….I'm your mother.”

From where they were standing, neither Susan nor Annie could see the look on Kerry’s face, but both of their jaws dropped in shock. Annie turned to Susan, her already-wide eyes widening even more. 

“You were _right?!”_

Sharon Williams - er, _Helen Kingsley_ \- waited just inside the Ambulance Bay doors as Kerry returned to the lounge. Susan and Annie followed her inside, leading her to pause once they were in private. 

As soon as the immediate shock had warned off, Annie’s primary concern was making sure Kerry came back inside (and not just because Grandma had always warned her that Momma’s formative years overseas meant she wasn’t as adapted to cold as most Minnesotans were). She had one hand raised slightly even now, as if worried that Kerry was going to fall over. 

“Momma, are you okay? Are you going to pass out? Why do all of your biological family members just show up here?” she asked in rapid succession. “There was your sister, and now your mom-”

“And there was you,” Susan added.

“And there was _me.”_ Annie paused, frowning, before looking at Susan in confusion. “And there was me?” 

“Do you not remember the first day we met?” Susan asked.

It took Annie a second to recall the time she’d been rushed into the ER several years prior due to a fire at her school, but once she had, she gasped in something like awe.

“And there as _me.”_

“Mm-hmm.” Susan nodded Annie towards the door. “Give us a second.”

“But I-”

“Give us a second,” Susan repeated. 

Annie sulked, but didn’t argue further. Instead, she just crossed towards the lounge door and stepped out into the hall. 

Susan turned her attention back to Kerry, who had yet to say anything. She was uncomfortably reminded of a similar situation three years before when, as Annie had accurately pointed out, they’d met Kerry’s twin sister right there in the ER. But, unlike that meeting, which had occurred entirely by chance, this meeting was not so. 

“You okay?” Susan asked quietly. 

Kerry drew in a deep breath before looking up at her. 

“I always thought it got lost. The letter. I always thought it… it got misdelivered or-or that he had the wrong address,” she said, thinking out loud. “He was always certain it was her, though, because he said tracking down the birth mother of twins was far easier than of a singlet.”

Susan nodded, herself remembering the conversation that came up after Kerry discovered the existence of Tamara Collins (and she herself had been reunited with her own long lost sister), where Kerry had expressed interest in trying to locate her birth mother. The idea had originally come up after Mildred’s death, but Kerry knew deep down that her reasoning for trying to locate this unknown tree of her family forest was not out of curiosity but out of mourning. However, it took on a new interest and importance when they learned that said birth mother had not given up one infant, but two. 

Using the (admittedly little) information Kerry had regarding Tamara’s background, she hired a private investigator to look into the existence of her birth mother. He’d managed to find a name and address in Indiana. Kerry’d written a letter, explaining the chance reunification and asking for the opportunity to talk, and had mailed it out sometime shortly before Rachel, Elizabeth, and Mark had started having familial problems. With everything that followed - and the persistent lack of an answer - it had been assumed that the whole thing had been forgotten about. 

Kerry, though, had not forgotten about it in the slightest.

“She wants to have coffee with me. To… to talk.”

“You should go,” Susan encouraged. “And take Annie with you.”

“Annie needs to stay here. So she can get enough to write about,” Kerry said, waving Susan away. 

“Kerry, I’m sure she has _plenty,”_ Susan assured her. “And besides….”

Susan laid a comforting hand on Kerry’s upper arm and squeezed it. 

“You already know the answer to the biggest question, right? You deserve to get the answers to all the other ones, too. And, when you do, you deserve to have all the support you can get. And since I can’t come with you, take her,” Susan said softly as she rubbed Kerry’s arm affectionately. “And I’m not just saying that because, if you don’t, there is a _100% chance_ she will complain about it to me the entire time you’re gone.”

Kerry couldn’t help but smile slightly at the (very accurate) suggestion that Annie would complain about being left behind. As she’d been aiming to make her smile, Susan squeezed her arm again. 

She almost gave in and pulled Kerry into a hug, but stopped short of doing so. Instead, she just ushered Annie back in and informed her that she got to go with Momma. 

“I would have been okay if you said I couldn’t,” Annie assured them as she grabbed her coat out of Kerry’s locker. “But, if you didn’t say anything, I was gonna ask.”

Susan and Kerry shared a knowing smirk before Kerry crossed for the hallway. Annie followed, but Susan held out an arm to stop her. She dropped her voice. 

“Hey. Look after her,” she said with a nod towards Kerry. “But - _but -_ let her do the talking.”

Annie nodded sincerely as she zipped up her coat and followed Kerry out into the ER. 

Kerry waited for her to join before starting for Helen, who smiled at them both. 

“I hope you don’t mind that I brought Annalise along,” Kerry said before quickly shaking her head. “Not Annalise. _Annie._ I brought _Annie_ along.”

Annie, who had looked at Kerry in _immense_ confusion at the sudden usage of her full first name, stared for a moment. Then, she frowned. 

Momma _never_ introduced her as Annalise unless it was prefaced with “my daughter,” and followed by “who goes by Annie.” And even that was relegated to rare formal occasions.

Kerry motioned for Helen to lead the way out the door with a smile that didn’t seem quite right. Annie _knew_ the ways and reasons Momma smiled, but she’d never seen this before. And as they stepped inside a diner, where the hostess led them to a booth, it occurred to her that Momma was _nervous._

But like she knew the ways and reasons Momma smiled, Annie knew what Momma was like when she was nervous. Most of the time - or really _any_ time Annie could remember - Momma’s nervousness came off as grouchiness. She got more particular about things or had less patience for nonsense. This was… different.

The hostess was replaced by a waitress who brought both women a cup of coffee and Annie a cup of water. Helen made to get up for a container of cream at the next table, but Kerry quickly asked Annie to get it for her, as Kerry had chosen to slide into the booth first. 

Annie did as she was asked before returning to the booth. It wasn’t unusual for her to leave her crutches behind for short distances like this, but it _was_ unusual for her to be so aware of her limp while she walked. She knew that this awareness was in part because her limp was heavier than usual thanks to an (illegal) slide tackle in her indoor soccer game the night before, but she wondered if it was also in part she was sure Helen was watching her closely. 

(Kerry always got worried whenever Annie fell while playing soccer, and this instance had been no different. Annie, on the other hand, was just mad that the other girl didn’t get carded for it.)

“Well... they say it isn't good for your arteries,” Helen said with a nervous chuckle. “I guess you'd know about that…. But I like it anyway.”

“How did you find me?” Kerry asked faster than she had meant to.

“The letter you sent.”

Something like a mix of confusion and… disappointment(?) crept into Kerry’s expression.

“But that was four years ago.” When Helen didn’t say anything, Kerry’s confused disappointment deepened. “Why-Why all this pretense? Why didn't you just write back?”

“I wanted to see you first.”

This clearly wasn’t the right thing to say, as instead of being comforting or sweet the way Helen intended, Kerry just looked hurt. Like she did earlier with Annie, Helen tried to steer the conversation away again.

“That poor little ice skater girl. Her leg looked awful.”

“She's young. She’ll heal,” Kerry said rather firmly. 

Annie glanced at her out of the side of her eye. 

_That_ was the kind of Momma’s nervousness she was used to. 

“What you do, it's so important,” Helen offered, still trying to diffuse the tension. But when it didn’t, she gripped her coffee mug tighter and took a deep breath. “I guess I was scared. I'm here in Chicago for a week, so…”

“You're still in Indiana?” Kerry asked quietly

Helen nodded. 

“Terre Haute.”

“That's next door,” Kerry said as emotion rose in her throat. “You could've been to Chicago a hundred times.”

At the change in Kerry’s tone, Annie automatically made to take her hand under the table, but hesitated at the last second. She had a feeling that the sudden sadness in Kerry’s voice wasn’t really meant for the woman sitting across for them, but rather for someone else. Someone Momma had been mad at for leaving her unexpectedly off and on for years.

Whether Helen seemed to sense this or just felt guilty at the pain she seemed to have caused, Annie didn’t know. Regardless, Helen hung her head a bit. 

“I'm sorry.”

“I looked for you. I... I hired an investigator. I found the right address…” Kerry sucked in air. “You knew where I was and, still, you waited so long?”

At Kerry’s question, Annie suddenly thought of Suzie. She, like Momma, had always known that her mom(s) didn’t give birth to her. And the same day that Momma had learned she had a sister (that had led to this meeting), Aunt Chloe came to visit for the first time since she’d left. 

Did Suzie ever wonder why Aunt Chloe hadn’t come back for her sooner? When she grew up, was she going to have a conversation like this, too?

“I can't explain it,” Helen said quickly as she began to pack up her things. “I know it wasn't fair. I'm truly, truly sorry.”

Helen made to stand up, but Kerry reached out to stop her, nearly pushing Annie out of the booth in her effort to keep her biological mother from leaving.

“Oh, plea... please,” Kerry said quickly. “Please. Don't go yet.”

There was a tense moment before Helen sat back down. Kerry lowered her hand and settled back in her seat, too. 

Unwilling to go another second without somehow comforting her Momma, Annie seized on her chance and took Kerry’s hand under the table. Kerry replied by squeezing her hand and taking a deep breath.

“So, um…” Kerry gave a small shake of her head and forced herself to smile. “Have you always lived in Indiana?”

“South Carolina, originally,” Helen replied before she too smiled. “I'm here in Chicago with my choir.”

“Your choir?”

“There's a Christ Crusade and we were chosen to sing in the festival chorus.”

“That... that sounds like quite an honor,” Kerry said, her smile slowly becoming more genuine. “When's the concert?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Community Baptist on Dearborn.” Helen checked her watch. “Oh... as a matter of fact, they're going to be looking for me. We've got a rehearsal.”

Helen started to gather up her things again, but paused. 

“Um...I'd like to talk to you again, Kerry,” Helen said before glancing at Annie. “And you too Annie. If you want to, that is.”

“Yeah, I would,” Kerry said, nodding. Then, she paused and glanced at Annie. “And Annie… if she wants to.”

Annie nodded, which made both Kerry and Helen smile. 

“So I can call you after I'm done?” Helen asked hopefully as she looked back at Kerry.

“Do you have the number of the hospital?” Kerry rummaged in her bag for a second before pulling out a pen. “There's a separate number for the ER. Uh... one second.”

Kerry scribbled a phone number on a napkin and handed it to Helen. Helen took it from her and carefully folded it before stowing it away in her pocket. 

“So you'll call?” Kerry asked as Helen tucked the number away.

“In a couple of hours,” Helen replied. 

She nodded and bade them both goodbye before rushing out. She paused briefly at the door to give them a small wave before stepping out on the street. 

Kerry and Annie watched her go for a moment before Kerry dug into her bag again, this time to pull out her wallet. She pulled out a ten dollar bill and set it on the table before nudging Annie to slide out of the booth. 

Once they’d both stood up and donned their coats and crutches, Kerry went to usher Annie on. But at the sight of Annie’s face, she paused. 

“What?”

“I don’t….” Annie took a moment to find her words. “Momma, are you mad at her?”

“Am I mad at her?” Kerry repeated, frowning. “No…. No, no. I’m not… I’m not mad at her.”

Annie nodded and continued on for the door, but she had the very strong feeling that Momma wasn’t telling her the truth. But at the same time, she had the very strong feeling that Momma didn’t know that.

In the short time between when Kerry and Annie returned to the ER and when they left for the Community Baptist Church on Dearborn, Kerry found Annie surprisingly quiet. She figured it was contemplation of the day’s events coupled with the need to focus on her shadowing. She only thought this, though, because she couldn’t see the face journey Annie went when her back was turned. 

Though she’d likely have reprimanded said face journey if she’d seen it, Kerry wouldn’t have been able to deny that it probably would have summed up her own emotions well. 

Annie’s question of whether or not she was mad at Helen was still bouncing around her head as they climbed the stairs into the church. She didn’t think she was mad, but she also couldn’t be sure she wasn’t. And, like Annie, she wondered if the anger _did_ exist if it was really meant for Helen or for the woman who took over her role.

They were met with the sound of singing the moment they stepped inside. Kerry paused for a moment, letting the music fill her in a way only old church hymns could before she and Annie entered the sanctuary and took a seat in a back pew.

It had been several years since she’d last been in a church, and, as she watched the choir sing, Kerry desperately tried to keep her thoughts from going there. 

“Can I ask a question?” Annie whispered, jerking Kerry from trying to wrangle her thoughts.

“If it’s about being inside a church, save it for later,” Kerry whispered back. 

Annie nodded and grew quiet again. For a moment, at least. 

“When is later?”

_“Annie.”_

“Okay, okay.”

Annie crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything else (though it was clear on her face that she was going to have a _list_ of questions by the time they left). Kerry just took deep breaths, letting the music swirl around her and draw up happier memories than her last church visit after which she watched her mother’s coffin committed to the ground. 

_She touched the stoll of the choir robe as it hung on the hanger. It was silky under her fingers, much lighter than the backpack full of textbooks over her shoulders._

_“Do you get to pick out the colors?” she asked curiously as Mildred gathered up her things._

_“No, we don’t. They’re on a cycle. Colors change based off of where we are in the liturgical year.”_

_“But_ someone _has to pick them out,” Kerry said. “Because you’re using the light blue ones for Lent. You didn’t use those last year.”_

_Mildred paused to consider. Then, she shrugged._

_“You’re right. I guess someone_ does _pick them out.” She slung her purse over her shoulder. “But, whoever it is, it’s not me.”_

_Mildred started out of the robe closet into the choir room. She picked up a stack of music and books from a nearby chair before turning to the door._

_“Do you_ wish _it was you?” Kerry asked as she followed her mother out of the room._

_“Not necessarily,” Mildred remarked. Then, she dropped her voice. “Though, between you and me, I don’t think it would kill us to liven things up a little.”_

_“When you say ‘liven it up,’ do you mean make it orange?” Kerry replied with a smirk. She cocked her head in question. “Is that still your favorite color?”_

_“I wouldn’t make it orange year-round. It wouldn’t work around Christmas,” Mildred explained as she led the way out into the hall. “But I think it would be nice for Pentecost.”_

_“I thought you’re supposed to wear red on Pentecost?”_

_“You are,” Mildred replied. “Though, I think orange would be a nice alternative. Especially since the Holy Spirit is orange.”_

_Mildred turned for the bathroom, but stopped when she realized Kerry had frozen in place. Her expression was one of surprised shock._

_“Where does it say_ that?”

_“The Gospel according to John, chapter 25, verse 11.”_

_Mildred chuckled to herself and started to open the door when she realized Kerry was still staring._

_“I’m kidding, my dear,” Mildred said, looking at Kerry over the rim of her glasses. “That was a joke.”_

_Kerry stared for an additional moment before shrugging nonchalantly._

_“I knew that.”_

_Mildred looked at her for a moment before opening the door and stepping into the bathroom. As soon as she was out of sight, Kerry snatched a bible off a nearby table and flipped to John 25:11… which didn’t exist._

Kerry smiled at the memory. She’d been fourteen when that memory took place. Referencing John 25:11 became a joke between her and her mother whenever one of them tried to pass something off as truth (biblical or otherwise). 

She was so caught up in her memory and thoughts of Mildred’s (repeated) assertion that the Holy Spirit was orange that she didn’t notice the song had ended until she saw Helen making her way towards them.

Kerry rose from the pew and stepped out into the aisle. Annie followed behind her.

“Has it already been two hours?” Helen asked nervously once she drew even with them.

“I, I just thought I'd catch some of the rehearsal,” Kerry replied with a small gesture towards the choir loft down in front. “It was beautiful.”

Helen gave her an appreciative smile before they fell into a brief but nevertheless awkward silence. Kerry chose to break it.

“It stopped snowing.”

Helen smiled again and nodded, first in acknowledgement and then towards the front pews.

“I gotta get my coat.”

She turned and started down the aisle before almost immediately stepping to the side to let others pass by.

“Seems like a lot of people brought their families,” Kerry remarked in passing.

“I have two children-- two _other_ children,” Helen said, quickly adding the clarification before Kerry could say anything. “Carl's 26. He does something with the county court system that I don't understand. And Lorie's a year out of college. Free spirit, bouncing around. And I'm... divorced.”

“I always had this image of you living somewhere with this happily-ever-after family,” Kerry said with far more candor than she’d intended. 

“Ending the marriage was more difficult than I imagined,” Helen confided as she pulled on her hat. “The church saved me,gave me back my life. Except for that part of my life that's taken up with my business. I own an auto parts store.”

“That's unusual.”

“I know. Nobody can quite believe it,” Helen said with a chuckle. “But it was part of the divorce settlement.”

Kerry gave a shrug of acknowledgement as she loosened her scarf. But as she raised her right hand to untie it, the cuff of her crutch came loose and fell off her arm. 

Helen caught it as it fell and handed it back to her carefully, as if afraid she was going to break it (or Kerry). Kerry muttered a word of thanks as she threaded her arm back through the cuff. 

“I’m sorry that you need it,” Helen said in a low voice. 

Kerry looked up from adjusting the cuff, her brow twitching into a furrow. She could feel her heart start to beat faster. 

“You know why?” 

“Annie told me,” Helen explained, nodding towards where Annie stood a few feet away. “She said it was, uh, something about a weird hip.”

Kerry felt herself inhale at the statement and nodded. 

“You said you met your sister. A few years back,” Helen said quietly. “Did...Did she have it?”

Kerry shook her head. 

“No. We asked, but… no. She didn’t,” Kerry informed her simply. “Nor did any of her children.”

This time, it was Helen who seemed to inhale in relief. Kerry was sure it was due to a deep-seated guilt that one of her children was disabled (a guilt Kerry understood well), and therefore relief that the other was not _(also_ a guilt Kerry understood well), but it nevertheless made her uncomfortable.

“I was thinking about what you said. About how I could've been in Chicago a hundred times, why this time?” Helen said as she pulled on her coat. She heaved a heavy sigh. “I think it's because I just recently got the news that your daddy died.”

“Oh, no, my father died years ago,” Kerry replied automatically. 

But when they looked at each other, they both knew she wasn’t talking about Henry Weaver.

“That's not who I mean,” Helen clarified. “Your _other_ father.”

Kerry waited for Helen to go on, but she didn’t. Instead, she just gestured for Kerry to lead the way out of the church. Kerry took this as a sign that she wanted to wait until they were outside before getting into the details. 

The two women started for the aisle, Kerry in the lead. Helen followed, only to pause when she saw Annie looking up at the architecture with great interest.

“It’s a very pretty church, isn’t it?” Helen asked as she stepped closer to Annie.

Annie tore her eyes away from the cross on the wall to look at Helen, who was smiling at her. 

“Yeah, it is,” Annie said with a small shrug. “It’s just… very _different_ than what I’m used to.”

At the statement, Helen lit up with excitement. 

“What kind of church to do you go to?” she asked eagerly. “Presbyterian? Methodist?”

“Uhhh….Reform?”

Helen paused, considering the answer. 

“Is that a kind of Lutheran?”

“No,” Annie answered flatly. “It’s a kind of _Jewish.”_

All of Helen’s excitement evaporated in a moment. She looked back and forth between Annie and Kerry, a look of panic growing on her face. 

“You’re Jewish?” she asked, her eyes widening. “Both of you?”

“I’m not, but Annie is.” Kerry took a step forward towards Annie and wrapped her free arm around her shoulders. “My ex-husband is Jewish. He wanted to raise her Jewishly and that was fine with me.”

“But… But…” Helen’s mouth worked wordlessly for a moment before she looked back at Annie. “If you’re Jewish, then you need to be saved. To accept the Lord Jesus into your heart and save you from your sin-”

_“Hey!”_

Both Annie and Kerry said the word at the same time, but Kerry was louder. She stepped in front of Annie, putting herself in between her and Helen. She raised a hand in Helen’s direction as she shielded Annie from her. 

“You can’t talk to her like that,” Kerry said in a fierce tone. 

Helen looked taken aback by the ferocity of Kerry’s defense. She motioned towards Annie. 

“But I was just going to-”

“I know what you were going to do. And I’m _not_ going to let you do that,” Kerry hissed. “I understand that you have different beliefs than she does. And if you can accept and respect that, we can keep talking. But if you insist on proselytizing to her, this is the end of our conversation.”

Helen blinked for a moment before swallowing. She nodded quickly.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she apologized to Kerry and Annie in turn. “We can…. We can keep going…. After all. Jesus was Jewish.”

Behind her, Kerry could hear Annie let out an audible huff. But, even as Helen turned and started down the aisle for the church door, Kerry didn’t lower her hand until it was just her and Annie alone. 

She turned back to Annie and hugged her tight to her for a moment. Annie was taller than she was, which made it easier to make eye contact but harder to console her like the little girl Kerry still felt she was. 

“Are you okay?” When Annie shrugged, Kerry gently brushed a piece of hair out of her face. “Are you sure? Because if you’re not comfortable, we can go home. We don’t have to do this.”

“Momma-”

“Annie, honey. You’re more important to me than this,” Kerry said sincerely. “If you don’t feel safe, we can go home. I don’t need to do this.”

Kerry cupped her cheek, willing Annie to feel that sincerity in her touch. 

“It’s okay,” Annie assured her quietly. “I mean, it’s not _okay,_ but she stopped when you told her to. And you still have questions to ask, right?”

“I do. But I don’t want to put you in any situation where you don’t feel okay.”

“Momma, I’m okay so long as I’m with you,” Annie said, matching Kerry’s sincerity. “But if she does it again-”

“We’ll go home, no questions asked,” Kerry finished. 

Annie nodded, which Kerry returned. She stroked Annie’s cheek once more before they turned to follow Helen out the door. 

They found her waiting at the bottom of the stairs. As they descended, Kerry and Annie once again felt that same discomfort they’d felt earlier as Helen watched them - Kerry when she’d dropped her crutch and Annie when she’d gotten up to fetch the cream at the diner. It wasn’t that they weren’t used to people staring, per se, but rather that they weren’t used to feeling the pity that came along with it.

After another brief moment of awkwardness, Kerry and Helen fell into step with each other down the sidewalk in the direction of the lake. Annie fell into step just behind them, kicking rocks and chunks of ice as she listened to the conversation.

“His name was Cody Boone,” Helen began, picking up from where she’d left off before they’d gotten sidetracked. “Should've been a character in some old Western TV show. We were fifteen…. Well, I was _almost_ fifteen.”

Kerry considered that for a moment, her thoughts immediately flashing to the almost-fifteen-year-old walking behind them. 

“And that was in South Carolina?” 

“Myrtle Beach,” Helen replied, nodding. “My daddy had a miniature golf course. Cody worked there after school.”

“So what happened?”

Helen shrugged.

“Nothing fancy. I got pregnant,” Helen said with a shrug. “All the parents pitched a fit, and rightfully so.”

“And abortion wasn't legal,” Kerry finished.

“Oh, I never would have done that,” Helen replied sincerely. “Back then they had these homes for girls in my condition. There was one up in Indiana where my aunt lived, so they sent me up there. That's where you were born.”

“Did you know you were going to have twins?” Kerry asked before she could help herself. 

Helen gave a small smile. She let out a chuckle. 

“Not… not _officially._ We had a doctor who came around every once in a while to check on us, but we didn’t have any of those fancy sonograms or anything there are now,” Helen replied. “But I always had a _feeling._ I just got so darn big. And the doctor always told me that the baby’s heartbeat was really fast. After I had two, I wondered if that’s why he said that. Because he was hearing two instead of one.”

Kerry took a moment to digest this new information. 

As a doctor herself, she found it so unusual, so _impossible,_ to not be able to diagnose a single pregnancy from twins. But when she thought of trying to do that without a Sonosite or any of the technology she had at her disposal in the ER, it didn’t seem so impossible.

“Did you ever want to keep us?”

Both Helen and Annie looked up at the question. Kerry was surprised at herself too, but did her best not to show it.

“Oh, of course,” Helen assured her. “Cody and I had a whole plan. He was gonna quit school, get work. There was a room over his parents' garage where we could live…”

Helen heaved a sigh.

“But in the end, you're fourteen, fifteen…. You got no money. So, I came to believe that the best thing for you would be to be with people who could care for you and do things for you…. It was true, right?”

Kerry felt emotion rise in her throat again the way it had in the diner earlier. (An emotion that made Annie move from following behind to her place at her mother’s right hand.)

“I don't know,” Kerry admitted. 

“Well, what I mean is-” Helen began.

“I know what you mean,” Kerry said, cutting her off. “I had two loving parents. I was happy…. But even with that, it somehow always... felt like rejection…. Does that make sense?”

Helen said nothing, but Kerry could tell in her eyes that she did.

“They took you so fast,” Helen said with a hitch of her own in her voice. “I never held you. Either of you. I never even _saw_ you. And nobody ever told me anything about any birth defect.”

Kerry raised a glove hand to her eye to wipe away the tears that had started to roll down her cheeks.

She was telling this woman things - being _honest_ about things - that she’d never done with anyone before. Not her mother, not her father, not even Susan. But there was something freeing in being able to say it, to tell this woman, this _stranger,_ the truth she’d been holding inside her for years. 

It felt bad, of course, but it felt good, too.

“When I was a little girl, I used to wonder if that's why I was given away,” she said in her most candid of statements yet. “Not quite perfect.”

Beside her, Helen slowed to a stop. 

“All Jesus' children are perfect.”

They paused for a moment, looking at each other, before they continued walking.

“An-and my father, Cody,” Kerry continued. “He nev... he didn't go with you?”

Helen shook her head. 

“I never saw him again.”

“Ever?” When Helen shook her head again, Kerry frowned. “But when you heard he'd died…”

“Kinda pushed a button, huh?” Helen said with a bit of a chuckle. “I guess I'd always thought about him over the years…. Although not as much as I thought about you girls.”

_Beep, beep. Beep, beep. Beep, beep._

The sound of Kerry’s pager going off in her coat pocket pulled them out of the realm of reminiscence and what-could-have-beens back to the present.

Kerry glanced at it, recognizing Susan’s number first before connecting it to the time on the screen. 

“That reminds me,” she said as she turned off the alert and put it back in her pocket. “I’ve gotta go. It’s my day to pick up the kids.”

“Maybe we could have dinner?” Helen offered. “You and I?”

Kerry was nodding before she realized it. A scribbled cell phone number and address of a recommended restaurant and then she and Annie were alone again, starting their way back towards Kerry’s car. 

The sound of Chicago traffic was too loud to hold a proper conversation, but even if it hadn’t been, Annie didn’t offer any.

“You’re very quiet,” Kerry remarked as they climbed into the car. “A lot to take in.”

For a moment, Annie said nothing. She just stared at the glove box with the same deeply contemplative look she’d had the entire walk back before she finally looked at Kerry. 

“I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Felt what way?”

“That you thought being given up for adoption made you… made you feel like you weren’t wanted,” Annie explained slowly. “Did…Did you ever tell Grandma or Grandpa that?”

“I…. No. I never told them that,” Kerry replied. “But I didn’t feel like that very often.”

“They way you said it to her, it sounded like you felt that all the time,” Annie said, nearly cutting her off. “It didn’t sound like it was just a sometimes thing. It sounded like you thought that a lot.”

Kerry closed her eyes for a moment and gave herself a moment to formulate her reply. Then, she sighed. 

“I did think about it. When I was your age,” she admitted quietly. “I...I didn’t have as easy of a time in high school as you do. And that’s a _good_ thing. I’m _glad_ \- I am _so_ glad - you haven’t experienced that. 

“But...But I was very lonely. And when you spend a lot of time being lonely, sometimes you… sometimes you start telling yourself things that aren’t true. That…That you don’t really believe. And for me, that was one of those things.”

Kerry’s heart, which was already rather achy at all that had transpired over the last several hours, ached even more at the look on Annie’s face. She took Annie’s hand in hers. 

“Even feeling that, you heard me tell her the truth,” she said sincerely. “I had loving parents. I was happy. And that is completely true. I wouldn’t have traded your Grandma and Grandpa for anything. _Anything._ And you know that.”

“So, you didn’t secretly wish that you’d never been given up for adoption?” Annie asked with a tinge of skepticism in her voice. 

“No,” Kerry replied with a small shake of her head. “I didn’t secretly wish that. I promise. Because if I hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have known my parents and I wouldn’t have you.”

“You wouldn’t have _me?”_ Annie asked, clearly confused. 

“Well, there was this boy who lived across the street from me by the name of Michael with whom I had a certain redheaded baby.” Kerry raised her eyebrows. “And if I’d never been adopted, I’d never have grown up with my parents and I’d never lived on that street or have met that boy or have had that redheaded baby.” 

Annie followed Kerry’s line of thinking for a moment and then shrugged in acknowledgement. 

“I guess so.”

Kerry smiled and squeezed that redheaded baby’s hand before shifting the car into reverse and backing out to go pick up her blonde-haired baby from school. 

As Susan refused to let her forget how much of a lightweight she was every time she drank alcohol, Kerry was very careful not to drink her glass of wine too quickly at dinner. Still, even taking it slow, the glass of Zinfandel served to relax her. 

“You said you had pictures of some relatives?” Kerry asked hopefully.

“I want to hear about Africa,” Helen said, sitting forward eagerly.

“Okay. We lived there when I was little.”

“The adoption people said the family, _your_ family, were involved in the church,” Helen told her. “Were they actually missionaries?”

“More like wannabe missionaries. If you could even call them that,” Kerry said with a shrug. “It wasn’t so much about spreading the Word as it was about being the ‘hands and feet of Jesus.’ You know, being in service to others. Giving back.

“My-my mom worked to set up new schools and my dad was a civil engineer. He taught me how to build a canal. Not that I've had much use for that.”

Like watching the choir sing earlier had drawn up a memory of her mother at choir practice, mentioning this drew up a memory of sitting with her dad at her parents’ kitchen table, a miniature working model of a canal he’d built for his train table sitting in between them.

_“So, that’s the basic mechanism,” Henry explained. “Are you with me so far?”_

_Kerry stared at the model for a moment, her brow furrowing._

_“Yes?... But also no.” Kerry shook her head. “I don’t know.”_

_“Amazing!” Henry said, his voice full of awe. “That’s the same thing your mother told me the first time I explained it to her. And now she’s an expert, so I think that means I’m doing something right.”_

_Now deeply confused, Kerry glanced at her mother, who was watching them from a few feet behind Henry. When their eyes met, Mildred mouthed, “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”_

_Kerry smiled, leading Henry to glance behind him towards his wife._

_“Did you say something, my love?”_

_“Oh, no, dear,” Mildred replied, shaking her head. “I just love watching you two together.”_

_Henry turned back around, preening a little bit at his wife’s compliment, unaware of the wink she gave Kerry when his back was turned. He leaned forward slightly towards Kerry._

_“Now, Kerry. What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word ‘ballast?’” Before Kerry could answer, Henry held up a hand to stop her. “Nevermind. Don’t answer that. We shouldn’t go there.”_

_“HENRY.”_

_“What?” he asked innocently, turning back to Mildred. “I didn’t say it! I just told her not to.”_

_He turned back to Kerry._

_“Now, you’re definitely thinking it, aren’t you?”_

_“I’m thinking…. Wait, what am I supposed to be thinking?” Kerry asked, lost again. “Are we still talking about canals?”_

_“Yes, Henry,” Mildred said as she planted a hand on her hip. “Are we still talking about canals?”_

“I _am._ I’ve _stayed on topic the whole time,” Henry stated, crossing his arms with a feigned huff. Then, he jerked a thumb at Mildred. “See, Kerry. This is what we get when we let your mother interrupt us.”_

As the memory faded, so did Kerry’s grin. Helen didn’t notice this, though, and just eagerly kept asking her questions.

“Well, did you like living over there?”

Kerry inhaled deeply and shrugged.

“I was different simply for being white,” she answered simply. “No one seemed to even notice the crutch.”

(The way Helen’s eyes flicked towards the mobility aid resting against the table at its mention did not go unnoticed by Kerry.)

“And then... my parents were older. Their health wasn't so great, so we moved back to Minneapolis when I was twelve,” Kerry continued. “Being home helped some. And retirement. But eventually their age caught up to them. Dad passed in ‘92 and Mom in ‘98.”

“But they were able to see you become a doctor, right?” Helen asked. “I’m sure they were proud of you…. _I’m_ proud of you.”

Kerry gave her a small smile and then took another deep breath.

“My only regret is that they didn’t get to know their grandchildren better,” she said, feeling that emotion once again catch in her throat. “Annie wasn’t even two when Dad died. Suzie _was_ two when Mom died. And neither of them got the chance to meet Charlie.”

“Suzie and Charlie,” Helen said slowly. “Are those your other children?”

“Yes,” Kerry said as she reached for her purse. “Suzie is nine and Charlie will be five next week.”

She rummaged in her purse for a moment before pulling out a small photo album. She flipped a few to one of the recent pictures of the girls - a picture of Suzie and Charlie posing in front of a sweaty and grass-stained Annie, who was holding up a soccer medal around her neck. She handed it to Helen.

“Oh, they are precious,” Helen said with a soft gasp as she looked at the photo. “And look like a handful. Especially this one.”

She pointed at Charlie, which made Kerry chuckle.

“Her first word was ‘run,’” Kerry informed her with a small smirk. “We didn’t know that was a _warning.”_

Helen grinned and handed the photos back to Kerry. 

“You asked about pictures, right?” Helen asked as she reached for her own purse. 

Kerry nodded and sat up straighter in her chair. 

Helen started showing her pictures, explaining who was in them and how they were all related, until their meals arrived. She set them aside while they ate, but resumed showing them as soon as they’d finished. 

“This is my Uncle Jackson.” Helen handed Kerry another photo. “Loved stealing cars. Just had a real passion for it.”

Kerry looked at it for a moment, wondering if there was any resemblance - similar noses or ear shapes or jaw line - before setting it aside. 

“Do you have any pictures of my father?”

“Just one.”

Helen shuffled through the stack of photos in her hand. When she found the one she sought, her smile softened. She gazed at it for a moment before handing it to Kerry.

“When I was away in Indiana, Cody drove all the way up to see me,” she informed her. “Didn't even have a license yet. For the life of me, I don't know what we thought we had to smile about.”

Kerry barely registered the last statement as she was too busy staring at the photo in her hand. 

Pictured were two young teenagers, a boy and a girl, both beaming for the camera. The girl had one hand on her protruding stomach. The boy had his hand around her waist. But it wasn’t the sight of young love or the thought of those what-ifs that nearly brought tears to her eyes. 

Consciously, she knew that the girl in the photo was now the woman sitting in front of her. But seeing the face of a fourteen-year-old girl, imagining the red hair even through the black and white of the photo, Kerry didn’t see Helen Kingsley. 

She saw Annalise Levin. 

It took Kerry a moment to come to. When she did, she handed the photograph back to Helen and started for her purse again. 

She managed to retrieve the photos again, she started flipping through them quickly. It wasn’t even necessarily to show them off, just to remind herself of reality. 

Her flipping slowed to a stop at a picture of Annie from her bat mitzvah. She had her rainbow tallit and kippah on and was posing behind the Torah. She was flanked by Michael and Adam, also in their kippahs and tallits, smiling proudly. 

The picture did it’s job. Seeing Annie next to Michael, Kerry was reminded that the black and white photo wasn’t _really_ Annie. It couldn’t be, as the girl in the photo (now the woman across the table) didn’t have Michael’s eyes.

“Is that your husband?”

Kerry glanced up from the photo to see Helen watching her. The picture in her hand was held at such an angle that Helen must have been able to sort of make out what it was. 

“Um… no. It’s my ex-husband,” Kerry said she turned the photo around. “Annie’s dad.”

“I see,” Helen said, nodding slowly as she looked at the picture Kerry held out to her. “Do you have a photo of your husband?”

At the question, Kerry felt the world fall out from beneath her.

She stared for a moment before slowly pulling the photo back towards her. Her heart began to beat faster, the same way it had when she thought Helen might actually have known about her hip after all. 

She considered excusing herself to the bathroom. To give herself a moment to breathe and figure out what she was going to say next. 

She considered lying, dodging the question. 

But as she looked back at the photo album in her hand, she saw the edge of a photo sticking out. She flipped to it and felt the world that had dropped out beneath her piece itself back together.

It was a photo of Susan and the girls. She was sitting up in bed with newborn Charlie in her arms. Suzie was on her right side and Annie was on her left. Both girls were looking down at their new baby sister, but Susan was looking up at the camera and smiling a tired smile at the person holding it. 

Kerry looked back up at Helen. 

“I don’t have a husband,” she said with a small shake of her head. “I have a wife.”

She turned the photo around to show her, willing the world not to drop out again as she saw Helen’s expression grow concerned. 

“This is my family. This is my wife, Susan. She works at the hospital with me,” Kerry explained in a voice growing shakier by the second. “She and I raise Suzie and Charlie together and we share responsibility for Annie with my ex-husband and… his husband.”

Helen looked at the picture for a long moment before her eyes found Kerry’s.

“You’re gay?”

Even now, so many years since she’d first come to understand it, being asked the question so directly and in such a tone as Helen’s served to make Kerry’s blood freeze in her veins. But even so, all she had to do was look at the picture and feel the warmth in Susan’s smile. 

“Yes,” Kerry replied with a small nod. “I would have told you sooner, but I didn’t think about it.”

There was a long pause between them. 

“And did your parents know you… that you’d made this choice?”

Kerry looked at her for a moment. 

“It’s not a choice,” she answered with more confidence in her voice than she’d expected. “It’s who I am. Who I was born as.”

Helen took another long pause. 

“When you met….” Helen’s eye twitched as she formulated her question. “When you met your sister, did she say she was gay too?”

“I didn’t ask. I assume she wasn’t, as she’d said she’d been married to a man,” Kerry replied. “But, then again, so was _I._ So that doesn’t really mean anything.”

“Well, if you two were identical and she’s not - then, you can’t be-”

Helen cut herself off before finishing her thought. She drew in a deep breath and then reached to take Kerry’s hands. 

“Would you pray with me?”

“No. No, I’m not doing this,” Kerry said as she pulled away.

She was up and out of her chair, purse, coat, and crutch in hand, before Helen could say anything else. She paused at the door only briefly to put her coat back on before stepping out into the cold. 

With the cold of the February air and the presence of snow and ice underfoot, Kerry couldn’t make her escape as quickly as she wanted to. She’d only made it across the street and little ways away from the restaurant before Helen caught up with her. 

“I didn't mean to offend you,” Helen called out as she caught up with Kerry. “I was just so glad to find you.”

“And my being gay changes that? This is who I am.”

“It's _wrong_ , Kerry.”

Kerry almost let out a laugh. She shook her.

“I knew this was a mistake.”

(She wasn’t sure if she was referring to coming out or to the meeting overall, but at this point she didn’t care).

“It's not what God created.”

Kerry stopped and turned to Helen, that ache in her heart growing heavy again.

“Why are people like you always saying things like that?” she asked in what she’d intended as a hiss but came out like a lament.

“Why are people like _you_ so dismissive of people of faith?” 

“Because you have no faith,” Kerry said as firmly as she could. “That God knew what he was doing. That God created me, too.”

“God _did_ create you,” Helen stated quickly. “And He loves you.”

Her point made but not taken, Kerry shook her head again and turned to keep walking.

“What is it about us that is so much more threatening than all the really terrible things in the world?” Kerry asked (half-rhetorically, half-not).

“Don't dismiss me so easily, Kerry.”

“People are starving, people are being shot at,” Kerry continued, ignoring Helen’s remark. “Men are flying planes into buildings, yet the faithful are saying, ‘Watch out for those lesbians, they're gonna destroy our God-gifted lives.’”

“Well, the world isn't perfect, it's what we make it,” Helen said. “And you were raised in the church, right? You know its healing mission.”

“Except that the welcome sign's not out for everyone, is it?” 

Helen slowed to a stop, and, against what she was sure was her better judgement, Kerry did too.

“Do you hate all faith?” Helen asked 

The ache in Kerry’s heart grew once more, but this time not just with sorrow, but with anger. (Which caused her tears, she did not know.)

Her thoughts flitted in half-formed memories. Being in the Communion line at church, her father telling her that the juice she dipped her bread in was the blood of Christ poured out for her and before giving her a wink. Seeing the excitement on Annie’s face as she chanted the Torah portion she’d been practicing for months at her bat mitzvah. Listening to her mother tell her the story of the pearl necklace that had been passed down for generations right before she was confirmed. 

“No. No, of course not,” Kerry replied adamantly. “I went to church every Sunday. My parents read devotionals before bed every night. My daughter recites prayers daily. What I hate is that my own faith now excludes me, tries to tell me I'm a sinner because of the people I love.”

“It's the people you've _chosen_ to love,” Helen said, trying to correct her.

“I _have_ made a choice. To stop living a lie about who I am,” Kerry stated. “And for the record, if anyone _chose_ for me to fall in love with Susan, it was my _mother. She_ was the one who invited Susan into our lives. _She_ was one who brought us together. _She_ was the one who figured it out first. 

“And she was also the one who understood that having faith was more than words on a page. She understood that God’s love was something you _lived_ . That ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love thy neighbor as yourself’ is a complete sentence. That Jesus didn’t add any asterisks or conditions. _We_ did.”

Kerry drew in a deep breath, the icy air in her chest instilling her with new life. 

“When I told you earlier that I thought I might have been given up because of my hip, because I thought I was not quite perfect, you told me that all Jesus’ children are perfect. That my being disabled was not a mistake. But now you’re telling me that being gay is? 

“Well, if my being gay is a mistake, then so is my being disabled. But you couldn’t, in good faith, stand there and tell me that to my face, can you? But they’re both part of who I am. You don’t get to pick and choose which parts of me are wrong and which aren’t. Either all of me is perfect or none of me is.”

For a moment, silence fell between them. Even the sounds of Chicago at night seemed dulled in the tenseness that had arisen between them. 

Perhaps in any other moment, Kerry would have wondered if the sudden righteous anger that had overtaken her was her channeling the spirit of Mildred Weaver. (Perhaps in a different moment than that, she’d have wondered if the anger was her own and the spirit she thought she was channeling would just have been proud of her for it.)

Helen was the first to look away.

“My... my hotel's nearby.”

Kerry muttered an, “I think I'll walk,” before turning away without another word. 

She continued down the sidewalk until the hotel was well out of sight.

Given her proximity to County, Kerry considered heading to the ER. But she didn’t. She’d signed out all her patients when she’d left with Annie to go to the church earlier. And, considering Susan had gone home a few hours before, there was no reason to go back now. 

She still couldn’t seem to go home, though, as evidenced by the extended period of time she’d spent sitting here in the El station. Train after train had gone by, but she hadn’t bothered to get on. 

As yet another came and went without her, she sighed and got to her feet. 

Letting her feet carry her, she found herself walking in the direction of the hotel Helen had told her she was staying at. She stepped into the lobby and headed in the direction of the elevators. 

One of the hotel staff directed her down the hall to room 415. She thanked him and headed for the door, watching the numbers on the doors grow the further she walked. 

“Helen?” Kerry said hesitantly before knocking on the door again. “Helen, it’s Kerry.”

There was a brief moment before the door opened to reveal Helen, now dressed in her pajamas.

“I don't want to leave it like this,” Kerry said, repeating the words she’d practiced in her head the entire walk over. “ The things that we said… Is this how you want to leave it? 

“If it is, tell me, and I'll go away… Like we never even met.”

Helen didn’t immediately reply, but nevertheless stepped out of the way. Kerry took this as an invitation, especially when Helen muttered something about making coffee. 

She must have felt as awkward and uncomfortable as Kerry did, though, as when she’d tried to pick up the grounds to put them in the machine, her hands were too shaky to tear open the bag. She fussed with it for a moment before tossing it on the table and quickly turning around. 

“They say the coffee’s free. You just got to pay for the room, that's all,” Helen said with a nervous chuckle. 

She took a step past where Kerry stood and paused, staring at the wall. 

“You think about a day like this for a long time,” she quietly thought aloud. “You play out every scenario in your head.”

“Except for this one,” Kerry finished.

“Is it because I gave you up?” Helen asked in a worried but somehow innocent tone.

The tone didn’t lessen Kerry’s urge to scoff.

“No. No, of course not.”

Helen turned to face her.

“Is it because I didn't come looking for you for so many years?” she asked, her brow furrowing.

“You don't get to paint the whole picture yourself, Helen,” Kerry said with a shake of her head. “Feel guilty because you gave up a child, and then… get all warm and fuzzy because it turned out alright. She had a good family, became a doctor. If you're disappointed, it should be with the limitations of your faith, not in the way that I've lived my life.”

“I gave birth to a child - to _children_ \- who I abandoned. For all the right reasons, they told me. But I thought about you. And I came to realize that by giving you up, I'd broken my own heart. And faith is the only thing that gave me hope. Gave me courage. I can't abandon it, too.”

Kerry closed her eyes. In that moment, the breath she took felt like a silent prayer.

“Can you accept me for who I am?”

“I can _love_ you,” Helen replied sincerely. “Whoever you are.”

Kerry shook her head.

“I don't want love without acceptance. That doesn’t really feel like love to me,” she said with soft candor. “It was so good to finally meet you.”

Susan had just settled on the couch after putting Charlie down (again) when she heard the front door open. Immediately, she jumped to her feet and rushed to meet Kerry in the foyer. 

“You’re home early. Well, earlier then I thought you’d be,” she said as she made for the front door. “So, how’d it go?”

Kerry didn’t say anything. She just tucked her hat back in her pocket. She took off her coat and unwound her scarf from her neck before stuffing the scarf down the coat sleeve and hanging it on a rack near the door. 

“Did Annie tell you what happened at the church?” Kerry asked as she threaded her arm back through her crutch. 

“Yeah. She told me everything. In detail,” Susan replied, her brow furrowing. “Why? What happened?”

“Well, it turns out that Annie’s being Jewish wasn’t the only thing she had a problem with,” Kerry said in as matter-of-fact a tone as she could manage.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s just say that she had a problem that the ‘w’ word I used to describe our relationship was not ‘work friends.’”

Susan closed her eyes. She shook her head. 

“Oh my God.”

The tears Kerry had fending off for most of the night started anew as she opened her mouth to speak. 

“I didn’t even _think_ about that,” she said in (self-directed) frustration. “I was too preoccupied with the fact that… that she was _here._ The-The questions I needed to ask. I-I-I didn’t even _think_ about it.”

“We got too used to your mom,” Susan offered. “We forgot that not all Christians think the way she did…. That _most_ Christians don’t think the way she did.”

Kerry stared blankly over Susan’s shoulder for a moment. Then, she sighed. 

“I’m going to bed.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“Not right now,” Kerry replied, shaking her head. 

“Okay,” Susan said before softly adding, “Well, can I at least give you a hug?”

Kerry had half a mind to say no, but her heart answered before her mind could. She nodded, leading Susan to wrap her arms around her and pull her into a tight squeeze.

Enveloped in the embrace, Kerry started to cry harder. 

Susan said nothing. She didn’t mutter reassurances, nor tried to look at her or wipe away her tears. She just held her as long as she needed her to. 

A few feet away from them, Annie listened to the conversation (and then the lack of) from the other side of her bedroom door. She waited until she heard hushed voices and then footsteps leading in directions before she opened it and peered out into the foyer.

It was empty now. Susan had (un)settled back in the living room and Kerry had gone upstairs to the master bedroom. 

She waited a moment - just long enough for Kerry to change and climb into bed - before creeping out of her room and up the stairs as quietly as she could. 

The door to the master bedroom was cracked just a little. Light poured out into the hallway through the crack, criss-crossing with the light coming from under Suzie’s door. (And Charlie’s too, though she pretended not to notice this.)

Annie pushed the door open just a bit. 

Kerry was in her place in bed. She lay on her back, one arm draped over her forehead. The lamp on her bedside table was on, casting light and shadows over her face. 

Annie pushed the door a bit farther, which made it creak. Kerry raised her head at the sound, and, at the sight of Annie, dropped her arm away too.

“Hi, honey,” she said with a small smile. 

“I heard you tell Mommy what happened,” Annie explained quietly. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she replied honestly. “But I will be.”

Kerry shifted herself up into a sitting position with her back against the headboard. She patted the space on the bed next to her. 

Annie climbed into the bed without hesitation. She crawled across Susan’s side until she curled into Kerry’s side. Kerry responded by wrapping both arms around her and pulling her close. 

She buried her face in Annie’s hair for a moment before kissing her on the head and murmuring, “I’d be a lot less okay if I didn’t have you.”

They remained like that for a moment before Kerry lifted her head. Annie adjusted herself so she could look up at Kerry while still tucked close in her side. 

“I’m gonna say something and it’s gonna sound kind of mean,” Annie began in an earnest voice. 

Kerry looked taken aback for a moment. 

“Okay…”

“She might have given birth to you,” Annie continued, “but she is _not_ your real mom.”

The sincerity with which Annie said this, coupled with the sentiment, brought a smile to Kerry’s face.

“Well, that’s not _mean,”_ she replied with a soft chuckle. “That’s just _true.”_

Annie nodded against Kerry’s ribs. 

“I’m glad she’s not my Grandma.”

“Me, too.”

Kerry felt Annie draw in a deep breath of her own.

“I miss Grandma.”

Tears pricked at Kerry’s eyes again.

“Me, too.”

They must have done more than just prick, as within seconds, Kerry had to lift her hand to her mouth to try and stifle her sobs. 

“You know,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “You know, if this wasn’t bad enough on its own…. Do you know what today is?”

“...Wednesday?” Annie answered slowly.

“It’s February 9th.” Kerry bit her lip against more tears. “She’s been gone for seven whole years. 

“And you know, sometimes I think that that’s not really that long. But then I look at pictures of her just before she died, and I see how little you were. How little _Suzie_ was…. And I realize that it really has been a long time.”

Kerry reached over and pulled a tissue out of the box on the table next to her. She dabbed at her eyes a few times and blew her nose before tossing the crumpled tissue in the nearby trash.

As she settled her arms around Annie once more, she let out a faint chuckle.

“One thing that I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been laying here,” she said with a hint of a chuckle in her voice, “is that Grandma would _not_ have been very nice to her.”

Annie looked up at her, wearing the same look of immense confusion as she had earlier. 

“What are you talking about? Grandma was always nice.”

“Grandma was nice to _us._ She wasn’t always nice to other people,” Kerry clarified. “But mostly when those other people were not being very nice to people…. She would have had a _field day_ with her.”

Kerry chuckled to herself once again before the weight of the day’s events settled on her again. She looked down at Annie. 

“Speaking of people not being nice to people,” she said, her brow furrowing. “I’m sorry.”

“To me?” At Kerry’s nod, Annie raised an eyebrow. “Why are you sorry to me?”

“Because of what she said to you at the church. Talking like she was going to try to convert you.”

Annie let out a disgruntled huff, but shrugged. 

“It’s not the first time it’s happened,” she muttered. “In fact… it kinda happens a lot. Not a _lot_ a lot. But still more than it should…. Which is never.”

“Well, it’s the first time it’s happened in front of me. And it’s not okay,” Kerry said simply. Then, she leaned her head back against the headboard. “That should have been my warning, shouldn’t it? We should have just gone home then. Called it there.”

Annie felt Kerry exhale heavily from where her head rested against Kerry’s side. She responded by hugging Kerry’s arm closer to her. 

The action, though, just raised sobs in Kerry’s chest again. She fought them down again, but not enough to keep them from her voice when she spoke.

“You know what else I’ve been thinking about as I’ve laid here,” she said in a low voice. “She showed me a picture of when she was pregnant. And I…. She said…. She said that she was ‘almost fifteen,’ when she had me. Which meant she was _fourteen.”_

Kerry poked Annie on the arm as tears overflowed her eyes.

“And that’s _you._ _You’re_ fourteen almost fifteen. And you’re still just a baby.”

Despite her efforts to be comforting and supportive to her Momma in her Momma’s time of need, Annie couldn’t help but roll her eyes. 

_“Momma.”_

“I know, I know. You’re not _really_ a baby,” Kerry acknowledged. “But you’re still _my_ baby. And you’ve still got a lot of growing up left to do.”

Annie gave her another fourteen-almost-fifteen-year-old eyeroll, but shrugged in concession. Kerry rubbed a hand up and down her arm. 

“Could you imagine having a baby right now?” she asked. “Much less _two_ babies.”

Annie’s eyes grew wide. She let out a firm “Mm-mm,” and she shook her head against Kerry’s side, which made Kerry chuckle again. 

“Me neither,” Kerry agreed. “You’d have to quit soccer.”

Annie sat up and looked Kerry in the eye.

“That makes me not want to have babies _ever,”_ she said sincerely.

Kerry smiled and pulled her back to her. 

“Maybe if you have babies someday, you can plan to have them outside of soccer season,” Kerry suggested. She glanced down at Annie and raised her brow. “When’s the right time to have babies?”

“When I’m a grown-up.”

“And?”

“I’m done with all my college.”

“And?”

“I’m in a committed relationship with my partner,” Annie answered automatically. She cocked her head slightly. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just say ‘married?’”

“Maybe,” Kerry conceded with a shrug. “Though whether or not you get married is up to you. You’ve got to have commitment no matter what.”

Annie considered this for a moment before nodding and then cuddling closer to her Momma. 

They stayed like that for a long moment. 

Kerry closed her eyes, grounding herself in the presence of her daughter. She continued to rub her hand up and down Annie’s arm, relishing her closeness and the feeling of her chest rise and fall as she breathed. 

“When you say that Grandma wasn’t always nice to people,” Annie began slowly, “do you mean like how she got when someone was rude to the cashier at the grocery store?”

“Yes. Exactly,” Kerry confirmed, nodding. “She only ever got _mean_ when someone didn’t _stop.”_

Annie nodded and fell quiet again for another moment. 

“I think Grandma would not have been very nice to her,” she said in a thoughtful voice. “But I don’t think she’d have gotten completely mean.”

“Yeah? And why do you say that?”

“Well, obviously she said a lot of things that Grandma would not have liked,” Annie explained. “But she did one thing that Grandma really _did.”_

Kerry frowned as she tried to replay the day in her head for something her mother would have particularly liked. When she came up blank, she asked, “What was that?”

“She had you,” Annie answered simply. “And if she hadn’t, then Grandma would never have gotten to adopt you. And Grandma always said that was the best thing to ever happen to her, followed by her meeting Grandpa. But she said she even told Grandpa that. A _lot._ But Grandpa agreed with her, so it was okay.”

Tears grew in Kerry’s eyes once more, but this time, she let them. 

“I think you’re right.” She hugged Annie even tighter and kissed her head again. “I love you so much. _So_ , so much…. I love you. And I _accept_ you. And I admire you.”

The last words came out as barely more than a whisper, but neither of them cared. Kerry just kissed Annie on the head again. 

“Forever and ever,” she murmured. “And ever… and ever… and ever…”

In between each ‘and ever,’ Kerry kissed Annie again, which made the girl start to squirm. 

“And ever…. And ever…. And ever….”

“Okay, okay,” Annie said as she tried to wriggle out of Kerry’s grip. “Momma, I get it.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” Kerry said, shaking her head. “And ever…. And ever…. And ever…”

Kerry started to poke Annie in the side in addition to the kisses, which made Annie squirm even more. 

_“Mommaaaaa,”_ Annie said in between giggles. _“Stoppppp.”_

“But I haven’t made my point yet!” Kerry said earnestly. 

There was the sound of footsteps. Kerry glanced up to see Suzie standing in the doorway, peering in at them. She pointed at the nine-year-old. 

“You’re next.”

Said nine-year-old lit up and raced to join them on the bed. Well, not _join,_ per se, considering how she immediately started trying to pull Annie away from Kerry the moment she’d climbed up.

“Hey, hey,” Kerry said, holding up a hand to stop her. “That was not an invitation to come up here and start hitting people.”

“But you said I was next!” Suzie whined. “And Annie’s in the way!”

“She’ll get out of the way,” Kerry assured her. “Let her finish her turn.”

“Why do I have to finish my turn?” Annie said, whining as well. “I was here first!”

As the pair of them started bickering about who was where first and what rights that did or did not give them, Kerry rolled her eyes and leaned her head back again. In doing so, she was overcome with yet another memory. 

_She was lying on her back on her father’s side of the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Mildred was sitting in bed in the place beside her with a blanket pulled up over her legs. She flipped through a small book in her hands._

_“Let’s see. Ah. Here we are.” She clicked her tongue in displeasure. “Romans. I’ve never been much of a fan of Romans. Well, to be honest, I’m not much of a fan of_ Paul. _Just don’t tell anyone I said that.”_

_Kerry sat up as Mildred cleared her throat._

_“Romans 8:38: ‘For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” she read before peering down at Kerry over her glasses. “And it can’t separate you from mine either.”_

_“Are you trying to imply that you’re God?”_

_“Kerry, dear, I would_ never _imply such a thing,” Mildred said as she set the book aside. “However, He and I_ do _have an understanding.”_

_“What’s that?”_

_Mildred turned her head to look at her. She raised a hand to stroke Kerry’s cheek._

_“That neither death nor life, present nor future, height nor depth - That no matter how lost or hurt or angry you might be, we will_ always _come find you. We will always be there with you to make sure you’re okay,” Mildred said softly. “The understanding is that the Lord, in His infinite wisdom and knowledge, finds you first and then lets us know about it.”_

_She gestured towards the ceiling at ‘infinite power and wisdom.’ Kerry followed the gesture with her eyes and then looked back down at her and narrowed her eyes._

_“But that passage says, ‘neither death nor life’ can separate us,” she pointed out._

_“It’s true,” Mildred replied, nodding._

_“Then, how will I know?”_

_“How will you know what?”_

_“How will I know that you’ve found me?” Kerry asked in the confident, challenging tone of a precocious teenager. “How will I know that you’re there with me to make sure I’m okay if you’re dead?”_

_Rather than elicit a defensive or stern reaction, Mildred’s expression changed to one of contemplation._

_“I’m not sure. It’s…. It’s hard to put into words,” she answered after a long moment. “It’s a feeling you’ll have. You’ll just… know. You’ll feel it and know that I’m there with you. And in the event that you_ don’t, _I promise that to you now.”_

_Mildred turned slightly and once again lifted a hand to Kerry’s face. This time, she cupped her cheek._

_“I will always be there for you, my dear. No matter what,” she told Kerry with gentle sincerity in her voice. “There is nothing you can do that will ever change that. Nor is there anything you can do that will ever change the way I feel about you._

_“There’s nothing_ you _can do. There’s nothing_ I _can do. There’s not even anything_ God _can do.”_

_Kerry narrowed her eyes._

_“That seems like a stretch.”_

_“Oh, He understands,” Mildred assured her simply. “Or at least He_ should. _I mean, He gave you to me. He_ better _understand.”_

_Kerry chuckled which made Mildred smile._

_“There is nothing you can do, my dear. Nothing at all.”_

_Kerry thought for a moment as Mildred’s hand fell away._

_“What if I stole something?” she asked curiously._

_“I would be very disappointed in you,” Mildred replied. “But it wouldn’t change anything.”_

_Kerry nodded._

_“What if I_ killed _someone?”_

_“Again, would be very disappointed in you. Wouldn’t change anything,” Mildred repeated._

_“What if I-”_

_“Are you going to do this all night?” Mildred asked, peering over her glasses at her again._

_Kerry gave an emphatic shrug._

_“Well, there has to be_ something.”

 _“No. Not a single thing.” Mildred took Kerry’s face in both her hands. “You can’t escape me or the love I have for you. And I love you_ so _much. I love you and everything you are. And I always will. Not even death will ever change that.”_

_She pulled Kerry’s head in close to her and kissed her on the forehead. Kerry could feel the Vaseline she’d just applied leave behind a mark on her forehead._

_Mildred pulled away and looked her in the eye._

_“Now, go to bed.”_

_“Bed?!” Kerry exclaimed._

_“Bed!” Mildred repeated in the same dramatic tone of Kerry’s exclamation. “You can’t escape my love for you_ or _the fact that it’s a school night. Now, come kiss me and then go to bed.”_

 _“But... But.” Kerry looked around quickly and then pointed to the devotional on the bedside table. “That says that nothing can separate us. So, I_ can’t _go to bed, because that would separate us.”_

_“Nice try,” Mildred replied with a smile. “Now, kiss me.”_

_Kerry scowled, but nevertheless scooted closer to her mother to allow her to wrap her in her arms. Mildred responded by kissing her head once again. Kerry lifted her head to look at her._

_“If you loved me, you’d let me stay up later.”_

_“Don’t push it,” Mildred said, still smiling though there was a note of warning in her tone. “And I_ do _love you. And I always will. Forever and ever.”_

The memory began to fade as quickly as it had come, but it had left in its wake a sense of comfort Kerry hadn’t felt so far today.

While she’d been distracted, Suzie had won out and was now defending her place at Kerry’s side. Annie, it seemed, wasn’t so easily defeated, though her efforts to reclaim her spot were marred somewhat by the presence of a new smaller contender (who was _definitely_ supposed to be in bed right now).

As Kerry came back to the present, she thought of her mothers words from so long ago. 

She had her girls to hold now. And she had Susan to hold her later. And in that alone, she could feel that hard-to-put-into-words feeling. Even without her here - or even feeling so close as she did the day Charlie was born - Kerry could feel her in them. She was here, with her, making sure she was okay. 

It might not be something she could put into words, but it was at least something she could count on. Forever and ever. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Hope you're having a good night so far (or day, depending on where you are or when you're reading this). 
> 
> This was meant to be a chapter in my [matriarchs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24111415) universe one-shot collection [Circles and Lines](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28619829), but, as can happen with things like this, I got too into it. And, given this is longer than 15k just as I predicted it might be, as I promised on tumblr, I posted it as its own separate fic. 
> 
> I don't think anyone is surprised/ would blame me for putting so much focus on this one episode though. "Just As I Am" is the only episode in canon where we really get anything of substance about Kerry and her family, and, of course, it ends with the heartbreaking rejection from her birth mother because she's a lesbian. It makes sense that I would want to really dive into this in the matriarchs universe, then, as the entire point of the matriarchs universe is the relationships between mothers and daughters. 
> 
> I've wanted to explore this episode in one of my AUs for over a year. In fact, right before I got the idea for "matriarchs" I was considering a second chapter of my [AU-of-an-AU where Kerry finds out she had an identical twin sister.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21497437) That idea ended up in this universe, which renewed my interest in exploring it. Add to that the character of Mildred and the fact that Annie Levin would be about the age that Helen Kingsley was when she gave birth to Kerry, and I just couldn't help myself. There was too much opportunity and I had to explore it.
> 
> In addition to the opportunities for weaving AU elements into canon events, I also aimed to give perspective to the different generations. We learn about Helen as a fourteen-almost-fifteen-year-old, we get memories of when Kerry was a fourteen-almost-fifteen-year-old, and then we get Annie _as_ a fourteen-almost-fifteen-year-old. Three generations of women alike in DNA, but not alike in many other ways. And, most importantly, I wanted to show the difference in the mother-daughter relationships. Kerry would do anything for Annie and jumps to her defense the moment that Helen even suggests something offensive. It's a stark contrast (to me and hopefully to you as well) to the fact that Helen can't even bend the rules of her faith for someone as important as her biological child. 
> 
> I could go on and on about everything in this, and, who knows, maybe I will on tumblr at some point, but I'm going to leave it here for now. Hopefully, you enjoyed. I'll see you on the next (regular length) chapter of the one-shot collection! Until next time.
> 
> (Oh, and PS: Susan is the only person Kerry told that she'd met her birth mom to in canon. Which means there is almost certainly a solemn conversation when Susan asks how it went and Kerry confides in her what went wrong, leading Susan to provide some awkward but genuine work friend support. Food for thought.)


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